2023 OCF End of Year Update
Published on December 24, 2023 by Chris
To all donors,
Thank you for your donations. Special shout out to RG people. We’ve been struggling to stay connected with y’all for in-person opportunities, but many attempts have not been possible because of incompatible schedules. But we’ll keep trying on our part in 2024. And as we wrap up our budget discussions for the $25k Conant grant we got, we may communicate here on opencollective.com new projects we plan to make that may give you more options for how you’d like your donations to be used, and we may give insights to newly formed ideas of how we’re trying to spend money we receive. Below are questions we need to answer to OCF as a sort of reflection for 2023, and you’re welcomed to check them out!
TO OCF,
1. What did you accomplish during 2023? How did you use money?
We supported many new survivors and their families in 2023, as well as some solidarity support to migrants coming into Chicago, in addition to staying available to survivors we’ve helped in the past.
We were successful in more attempts to reflect and decompress instead of just picking up new work.
We finally have begun vetting a new potential member, which will hopefully mean meaningful growth in our effectiveness in 2024.
We had our first attempt at fundraising in person.
We won our biggest single grant this year ($25k).
We’ve spent our money on the following,
- practical assistance to survivors to help them survive or to prevent further harm (some prevention expenses found in the Rose Fund), be it cash or reimbursements. These are scattered across: the expenses on our main OC page; and in our projects, including the archived Lilac Fund.
- stipends for organizers
- fundraising materials (shirts and graphic design)
- translation work
- meal(s) during team building
- Consultation
2. What challenges did you face during 2023? What did your Collective learn? How did you change or grow?
- Vetting Is an ongoing difficult process when trying to bring new folks on
- Capacity at times was difficult as a small group holding heavy work
We learned our communication and honesty about our capacity is necessary. The vetting process will always need to be flexible; this transparency and vulnerability about our capacity has proven to be effective when working directly with the community as well as it has helped us build stronger relationships and learn as we go with the people we work with.
3. What are your plans for 2024? Anything exciting coming up?
In 2024 we’re planning to continue and expand on the following:
- Increasing our budget- fundraise, fundraise, fundraise!
- Strengthening Vetting process - in 2023 we’ve worked to build out a vetting process for inviting new folks to join and participate in Nebula survivor support work. For 2024, we’re planning to continue this process.
- Bring on new folks - through the vetting process, in 2024, we’re planning to invite more folks to join the mutual aid collective, share their skills and interests and get to know more folks in the anti-violence and anti- domestic violence world.
- Public programming and events- new opportunities to collaborate with local groups, get to know/introduce ourselves to more community members, and increase our funding support.
Collab with other groups- Develop a platform for the larger Chicago network to reflect, research and learn together to IPV, DV, and SA in our Networks, Communities, and Movements.